BLENHEIM — Parts of an antique tourist attraction in this scenic valley town are being found along almost 30 miles of the debris-littered downstream banks of the creek it spanned for 156 years.

To the residents of North Blenheim in Schoharie County, the Blenheim Covered Bridge was like an old and dependable friend, though it had not been used by vehicles since 1932. It survived many winter ice floes and the massive floods of 1869 and 1903. Many thought it was a goner during the 1996 flood, but it stood its piers.

Then about 1 p.m. on Aug. 28, an angry Schoharie Creek swollen by Tropical Storm Irene was its undoing. The bridge built in 1855 by Nichols Montgomery Powers was shredded with a boom and an eerie growl.

"I was out taking pictures of the flooded creek, put my camera in my pocket and turned around to leave and there was this weird noise like I've never heard before, and I turned back just in time to see it smash into the new modern bridge I was standing on," said Steve Kowalski, who runs the Covered Bridge Garage on Route 30 near the bridge. "The water was so strong it was destroyed in an instant, and the whole roof sat in the middle of the new bridge. I could not believe what I was seeing. I've been here 25 years looking at it and it was just gone."

Since that day many people along that creek have been trying to put their lives and destroyed homes back together again, including Kowalski, whose house was swept away. Some homes still sit vacant looking beyond repair.

Behind a barn a couple miles north on Route 30 sits a huge pile of splintered old timbers with rusted iron bolts and plates here and there. It's all bits and pieces of the bridge that have been recovered so far. The pile grows higher day by day thanks to the Schoharie County Highway Department, which has been bringing the remnants to the site after they are found.

"I got a call today from someone down in Sloansville who said he found pieces of the bridge on his property," said former New York secretary of state and Blenheim resident Gail Shaffer, who is a member of a group hoping to get grants and other funds to construct a replica of the span incorporating some of the salvaged pieces. "It has really caught on, and there are several people out there looking for parts along the creek and they keep coming in."

Some speculate that parts of the bridge could have made it all the way to the Mohawk River because the creek ran so high for so many days.

Shaffer said that now that the bridge is gone, except for the stone piers on either side of the creek, the U.S. Department of the Interior has begun the process of removing the site from the National Historic Register.

"We are trying to get them to stop that process and give us more time," Shaffer said. "They said we need to find 51 percent of the original structure. We need all the help we can get."

The bridge was one of six such crossings in the Capital Region, and was one of New York's 24 remaining covered bridges.

Kowalski, who has run his humble, quirky garage in the shadow of the bridge for 25 years, has a unique understanding of its importance as he became its unofficial tour guide over the years.

"People are pulling in here all the time and blocking my bay doors wanting to know about the bridge," Kowalski said as he stood by a dusty vintage cigarette machine that sold them for 35 cents a pack. A crackling woodstove filled the garage stuffed with oddities and antiques with a woodsy aroma. "They came here from Austria, Germany, Australia, England, South America, you name it, to ask me about the bridge and take pictures."

Some accounts say the bridges were covered to provide lovers a chance for a little undercover romance. An 1881 covered bridge in West Montrose, Ontario, Canada, is called the Kissing Bridge, and lore has it that single young women were duly warned that men had their horses trained to stop by themselves on the spans.

The reason for the cover, however, is more mundane. The bridges were roofed to keep out snow, ice and rain to ensure they lasted longer. In the horse-and-buggy days, they also provided shelter to travelers in a storm, according to historical accounts.

Some people have found parts of the bridge and are trying to sell them, Kowalski said.

"That's illegal. The bridge was owned by the county," Kowalski said. "I joked for a while that I'd get parts and make antique covered bridge back-scratchers and sell them for $25 a pop."

But Kowalski has to deal with the loss in a more personal way.

"I named the business Covered Bridge Garage because when people always asked me where I was located I would say by the covered bridge," Kowalski said. "Now I've been calling it the Uncovered No Bridge Garage."

More Information

Blenheim Bridge (1855-2011):

The 232-foot-long bridge across the Schoharie Creek in North Blenheim was the longest single-span wooden covered bridge in the world, though some historians call it a moot claim. It was built five years after the Buskirk's Bridge that links Rensselaer and Washington counties across the Hoosic River, and was one of only six covered bridges known to still exist that had two lanes. It was open to pedestrian traffic only since the early 1930s.

How to help

For more information on how you can help or if you've found some of the bridge, call Carle J. Kopecky, director of the Old Stone Fort Museum Complex at 295-7192; or Gail Shaffer at 827-6353.